This is not an isolated incident; my child has brought these topics up at least twice in the presence of both myself and another family member.

My family member mentioned it again: my oldest child attributes the divorce to "a phone." The context missing from that claim is that I withheld my phone as a boundary because my ex-spouse was constantly making baseless accusations of infidelity. My child also mentioned being told that I stole money during the marriage. However, the reality of our 10-year marriage (120 months) is that I was the primary financial provider for 108 of those months. My ex-spouse only covered the majority of the bills for roughly one year.

The financial strain we experienced was due to my ex’s refusal to agree to a budget, which led to a cycle of falling behind and relying on credit. While my ex is now telling our child that "online shopping" was the problem, the context is that my ex was actually the one making those frequent, uncoordinated purchases.